I will preface this recap by saying that, first: Happy Thanksgiving! Second: although it was horrible to watch, this is only one game and in the grand scheme of things (as long as we don't play this way again) this isn't something we necessarily need to be worried about.

But the Bruins lost 6-1 last night to the Detroit Red Wings. There are no words to accurately describe the debacle that was the that game. I don't remember the last time I saw the Bruins play that horribly and I'm hoping it will be a good long while before I ever have to sit through it again.

I'm pretty sure there is absolutely nothing good to be said for the way we played. Our defense was basically invisible. They weren't keeping the puck in our zone, they weren't stopping rushes, they weren't creating plays. They were sluggish and uninterested in the game going on around them. We couldn't even keep the puck in their zone for very long. The Red Wings were skating circles around our entire defense. The only thing they seemed capable of doing last night was causing more problems.

Dougie Hamilton couldn't keep the puck on his stick if he tried and his repeated attempts to self pass only caused an obnoxious number of turnovers. Zdeno Chara wasn't doing much better. He looked completely lost on the ice. Only time he didn't was when we had him screening the goalie (which, as we all know, did nothing to ease our plight.) Adam McQuaid, on his first night back, ended up with two penalties, one of which ended up in a Red Wings goal. Johnny Boychuk also ended up in the penalty box. Bartkowski was off being Bartkowski and not doing anything effective. And Torey Krug, our knight in shining armor who has done nothing but good things for our team, was a hot mess. He was so much of a mess that he actually knocked the puck into our goal, widening the score deficit. Overall, our defense sucked last night and we were lucky they only managed to get 22 shots on goal because who knows how much worse it could have gotten.

Also, due to our lack of defense, Tuukka Rask was basically left out to dry. Now he definitely isn't innocent in this situation, because there were some saves he totally should have made and didn't, but we can't put all the blame on a goalie who had no support out in front of him. Knowing Rask, he threw a fit in the locker room and we won't see another sub par performance like this from him again.

And our offense wasn't helping anything either. Granted Detroit is having a slight goalie crisis right now since they can't figure out who to keep as their starter, but as of yesterday Gustavsson was still their back up goalie. Gustavsson has a .927 SV% and a 2.17 GAA. We for sure have faced harder goalies in our time and yet we only managed to get one goal past him when it was already too late to rally. We also only managed to get 17 shots on goal. Seventeen shots. That's absolutely absurd for the Bruins, who in their last ten games took an average of 29 shots on goal per game.

The primary reason we got no shots off was because we refused to shoot the puck. We just kept passing and passing and passing and when we did shoot it wasn't aimed. We basically just fired and watched as it went wide. We didn't score because of this and because when we did manage to get a shot on goal we were constantly firing into Gustavsson's pads or chest. Last time I checked, you can't fire a puck through a solid being. We were also being extremely sloppy in both zones. We took a total of 5 penalties and we were lucky the Red Wings only scored on one (not that they needed powerplays the score..)

But we sure could have used some power play goals. Detroit had 4 penalties, meaning we had 4 opportunities to capitalize and at least bring the game to a closer end than what we saw. But our power play, who as of late has been seeming to click better, just couldn't get anything through. We need to somehow find a way to start taking advantage of these opportunities if we don't want to see another loss like this.

We can be thankful for Iginla though, who scored late in the third to rob Gustavsson of a shut out and, more importantly, to keep us from being shut out. This goal came after Claude Julien realized the crazy lines he created (Smith-Bergeron-Iginla, Soderberg-Krejci-Eriksson, Lucic-Kelly-Marchand) were an even worse idea than just letting the original lines play the rest of the game.

So let's hope that tomorrow's game against the Rangers looks nothing like what we saw last night and that the Bruins come out trying to prove we're still the beasts of the East.